10 Little-Known Google Chrome Tricks

10 Little-Known Google Chrome Tricks

Google Chrome is awesome enough as it is. But it’s even more awesome because it is begging, crying, screaming for you to customize it however you want. Nevermind all the cool extensions you can use extend Chrome’s awesomeness, there’s some homegrown deliciousness already built into this bad boy. Here’s a taste.

Omnibox Calculator

The omnibox is that place up at the top of your Google Chrome browser where the URL of the website you’re viewing is located. In that box, however, are multiple functions. You can, of course, type in the URL of your websites to go to them. You can also type in anything there and press ENTER to do an automatic web search. But you can also do simple computations in that box. Type in the numbers you want to do equations with and use ‘+’, ‘-’, ‘*’ or ‘/’ (add, subtract, multiply and divide) to manipulate them. Your answer will be the first selection in the drop down menu.

Paste And Search

You’re on a website and you find something you want to do a search for. Highlight it. Then you hit Ctrl + C to copy it. If you right click on the omnibox to paste it pay attention to the drop down menu. One of your selections, near the bottom, will be to ‘paste and search.’ Instead of having to use extra keystrokes Chrome will automatically execute your search for you with the info you copied.

Auto-Complete Your Personal Information

In the upper right-hand corner there is a ‘menu’ icon that looks like three horizontal stripes. Click it. Then click on ‘Settings.’ This is a menu of items you can use to customize your Chrome browser, but focus on the last option which is ‘Show Advanced Options.’ Click it and look for ‘Password and forms.’ Underneath that and to the right will be ‘Manage Autofill settings.’ From there you can put in certain personal info that will be auto-completed whenever a website calls for it like, perhaps, sites that have web-enabled grad-school applications?

Caution: That’s your personal info. Be careful where you leave it.

Incognito mode

If you don’t want to be tracked in any way whatsoever by cookies or anything else just hit Ctril +Shift + N. A new window will open up with a dude with a fedora and sunglasses in the upper lefthand corner. This also disables extensions, but you can turn them back on in the ‘Settings/Extensions’ menu.

Chrome commands

Chrome has a list of commands you can trigger right from your omnibox that will call up your bookmarks, history, plugins and more. Type in ‘chrome://chrome-urls’ to see the full list.

Google Task Menu

Click the Menu button and run your mouse over ‘Tools.’ To its left the option ‘Task Manager’ will show up. The Task Manager will tell you how many resources your tabs are soaking up. Under ‘Memory’ the bigger the number, the more it’s slowing down your computer. If one of ‘em is getting out of hand, kill it and watch how much smoother your other pages will run.

Show Icons Only On Your Bookmarks Bar

First, enable the bookmarks bar in your ‘Settings’ menu under ‘Appearance.’ Tick the box next to ‘Always show the bookmarks bar’ and look what shows up under the omnibox. Now, whenever you want to save your favorite websites to it you can just drag them in from the omnibox. Now right-click the link you just dragged there and click on ‘Edit.’ Delete the title of the webpage and click ‘Save.’ Now only the website’s icon will be there on your bar leaving room for tons of other pages.

Start Up With Specific Pages

In your ‘Settings’ page will be the option for what Chrome should do when it starts up. If you want it to start on the pages you last closed it on, tick ‘Continue where I left off.’ If you want it to start up with specific pages every time, tick the option below it and click on ‘Set pages’ to add the pages you want.

Pin Tab

Got a favorite tab you keep losing sight of in the myriad of open tabs you have? If you want to make sure one tab stays right where you can see it right-click it and click on ‘Pin tab.’ That tab will move all the way to the left and will not budge no matter where you try to drag it.

Resize Text Fields

Every text field everywhere on most every site can be adjusted for size thanks to Chrome. Look in its lower right-hand corner for a little set of diagonal lines. Click, hold and drag that to the size you want. Look at that. Space!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Span is a perennial Super-Senior at a school in Ypslilanti, MI holding his degree hostage. You can follow him on twitter as @MightySpan. Much like his writing, Span offers helpful life advice and humor there to help you forget how crappy your boss is. And he's on the radio.

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